


the soul in paraphrase

by spookyfoot



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Character Study, M/M, Pygmalion and Galatea, Relationship Study, Romanticism, dragging percy shelley, mythology used as a chance for FEELINGS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 12:56:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17488445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookyfoot/pseuds/spookyfoot
Summary: Victor watches his statue turn from stone to flesh; they both find out what it means to learn you can bleed.Yuuri is fascinated by the hummingbirds that dart through the garden beside Victor’s cottage. Sitting beneath an Alder older than the house itself, Yuuri's eyes remain fixed on the web of branches overhead, watching the birds flit from blossom to blossom, only wholly visible when they pause.Sometimes, Victor feels the same about Yuuri. As though Yuuri had been a blur in the back of his mind, an idea that he couldn’t quite shape until the idea had decided to pause and carve out a shape for itself. Victor could only catch Yuuri when he chose to be caught.A particularly brave bird darts less than an arms length from Yuuri’s face, wings moving so quickly they appear still. Yuuri turns, a partial silhouette against the late afternoon sun behind him. “Do you think they too were once made of marble before they learned to fly?”





	the soul in paraphrase

**Author's Note:**

> written for the born to make (art) history zine and honestly my favorite yoi fic i've ever written. i was incredibly lucky to collaborate with the amazing sheepskeleton and i'll link her art here once she's posted it. 
> 
> we first announced this project a little over a year ago and it honestly it was such an honor to work with everyone involved. thank you to my fellow mods and all the participants for everything <3

Victor starts the statue on a cloudy Tuesday, the night after he pushes Georgi into a lake. Georgi, being Georgi, declares that he’s just finished his latest masterwork, _an opus on the relationship between our creative souls and our imagined audiences_ , and then insists on reading it at the top of his lungs. Victor is far more interested in a cluster of clouds surfing the far shore of the lake. Early spring sunshine and the sweet smell of the season’s first violets — ruined. Even shoving Georgi into the lake isn’t quite enough to save it; Victor regrets agreeing to let Georgi visit him at all. 

Then again, his studio’s been less of a respite than he’d hoped. Nestled in the heart of the Lake District, Victor’s cottage is his refuge from London streets that are more smoke than air. He’d invited Georgi, Mila, and Yuri to visit in a misinformed fit of sympathy after the not-so-mysterious collapse of Georgi’s latest love affair. In light of that, he should have expected Georgi to cope by projecting his own grandiose notions of self onto a personified bird.

“I’m shocked it took you that long to push him into the lake,” Yuri sniffs. He’s tucked under one of the broad old birches that dot the lakeshore, and though he’d never admit it, it’s as much to protect his skin from the glare of summer sun as it is to keep his distance from Victor.

“Patience is a virtue,” Mila sing-songs, dancing just out of Yuri’s reach before he can swat her. She turns to Victor, marking her next target. “Although, I think you’ve kept us waiting for far too long. When will your next piece be ready, Vitya?”

Victor flinches, then smiles. “I am working on something but —”

“If Yakov’s expecting Vitya to flounce into London after two years with a new exhibit ready to display, he’s in for a rude surprise,” Yuri says.

“At least I’m not _just_ rude,” Victor replies.

“Let’s see what you’re working on then,” Mila says, already darting off in the direction of Victor’s cottage. Yuri follows her, and Victor, momentarily stunned, sprints after them to catch up. Georgi, soaking wet, drips a trail from the lake to the studio.

When Yuri sees the statue, his flat, unamused face tells Victor no more than the marble itself has. “So you have nothing,” he says.

It sounds far worse coming from Yuri’s mouth than it does in Victor’s head.

Mila’s running her hands over the marble, smudging the grease crayon Victor had laid down earlier, hoping it would finally inspire him to chip away. All he’d wanted to do was erase it on the spot. After a few more minutes, he makes noises that it’s time for Makkachin’s dinner so that Mila, Yuri, and Georgi will forget that he’s barely gotten started on the statue at all.

He sneaks back into the studio that night, like a thief in his own home. The marble is waiting for him. Victor has sketched and sketched without seeing beyond its surface, cool and ungiving beneath his fingertips.

(And although he knows what marble feels like, and that the marble itself feels nothing, he still has the sense—or perhaps the complete absence of it — that at any moment the stone might turn to satiny skin beneath his palm.)

“Who are you?” Victor asks.

The marble doesn’t answer.

“Maybe you won’t tell me who you are until I tell you who I am,” Victor muses. And he begins to speak.

________________________________________________

Victor works on the statue for weeks, spending most of his waking hours in the studio with Makkachin curled in one corner. Twice a day he’ll pry himself from the statue’s side—and, as Chris comments when he visits: _its suspiciously well sculpted ass_ — to take Makkachin for her walks. He chips away at the marble as he chips away at the walls he’s built around himself. He tells the statue about Yuri’s petulant affection; about Mila’s mysterious way of bringing people together, like she understands their desires better than they do; about the way Georgi’s hair manages to defy all known laws of gravity. He tells the statue that he’s felt stuck, trapped in a design of his own making, unable to surprise anyone, unable to surprise himself. It’s safe to talk to someone who can never spill his secrets, who has no expectations as to what those secrets are.

As the statue takes shape under his hands, it often feels as though it’s creating itself — Victor’s merely an instrument. He finishes it two months later, late afternoon sun winding towards the horizon, chisel abandoned to the floor in favor of nursing the cramps in his hand. He steps back, admiring how the statue’s eyes seem to move with him, how its hand is eternally reaching for Victor’s, begging Victor to take it with his own. So he does.

He laces his fingers through the statue’s. They’re warm. He moves his arm to wrap it around the statue’s waist and finds satiny-smooth heat-flushed skin. He tilts his head up and finds himself staring into a set of warm, brown eyes, flecked with gold. They blink.

“Hello, Victor.”

________________________________________________

Less than an hour after the statue’s first breath, Yuuri’s decided on his name, and that groping Victor’s ass is the appropriate show of camaraderie. Victor hadn’t known he could still feel embarrassment. But it’s exciting, to feel the parts of himself he’d let ossify under the fingers of time turn to blood-flushed flesh once again.

Draped in a loose, semi-transparent robe, Yuuri pokes around Victor’s kitchen, in full view of the half-curtained parlor windows. The cottage’s numerous windows were one reason Victor had chosen to seclude himself here; now they seem less advisable. Victor doesn’t expect that any of his neighbors will see through the wild hedges that creep above the surrounding walls. Nor does he expect them to slip past the gate just to have a peep through his window. _But_ , he thinks, _it’s not as though I expected my statue to bleed and breathe, either_.

(It doesn’t feel right to call Yuuri his statue. Not when he can watch Yuuri attempt to unfasten a jar of jam with a look of utmost concentration; the furrow between his brows something his placid, stone-set look of longing never would have allowed.)

“Do you want me to open that?” Victor asks. Yuuri starts and the jar drops, splintering on the floor. Yuuri bends down to prod one of the shards before Victor can say anything and pricks his finger. A sluggish drop of blood pools on his fingertip, lingering as though it, too, is testing the shape of its new reality before joining the jam on the hardwood.

“Never mind,” Victor says. Victor arrives with a rag and Yuuri snatches it out of his hand to start in on the floor. “Yuuri.”

“I’ve got it.”

“Yuuri, that was for your hand, not the floor.”

“Oh.” Yuuri looks down.

“Can I see?”

Yuuri holds out his hand, palm up, in lieu of an answer. A fresh drop of blood beads at the tip of his finger, the gash visible just beneath.Victor wonders if this cut will become Yuuri’s first scar. The pads of Victor’s fingers tickle the soft, unmarred skin of Yuuri’s palm, and Yuuri fidgets, but doesn’t pull away; his hand, warm and alive, remains cradled in Victor’s own.

“You need to be more careful,” Victor says, grabbing a bottle of spirits to disinfect the wound. “I didn’t realize —"

“That you could bleed?”

Yuuri flinches at the alcohol’s sting.

“Yuuri?”

He remains silent. When Victor looks up from bandaging Yuuri’s hand, Yuuri’s turned towards the window, focused on the last drizzle of spring sunshine before darkness overtakes the garden.

________________________________________________

Yuuri is fascinated by the hummingbirds that dart through the garden beside Victor’s cottage. Sometimes, Victor finds him folded into the window seat of the sitting room, Makkachin at his side, both of them watching the hummingbirds dance among the trees; most times, he finds Yuuri outside instead. Today, Yuuri lies beneath what Victor has come to think of as Yuuri’s tree, an Alder older than the property itself, casting its own oasis of shade just below the arbor. Yuuri’s eyes remain fixed on the web of branches overhead, watching the birds flit from blossom to blossom, only wholly visible when they pause.

Sometimes, Victor feels the same about Yuuri. As though Yuuri had been a blur in the back of his mind, an idea that he couldn’t quite shape until the idea had decided to pause and carve out a shape for itself. Victor could only catch Yuuri when he chose to be caught.

“You left your shoes by the door again,” Victor says. He did not bring the shoes with him. Yuuri still refuses to wear shoes outside, most days.

Yuuri keeps his eyes on the hummingbirds. “I know.”

“Yuuri?”

“Come sit with me?” Yuuri asks. He’s laid out a threadbare cloth Victor sometimes uses when he wants to sketch outside and he’s left an empty space beside him. A Victor sized space. The tall grass bends under Victor’s feet, tickles his soles, and slips between his toes, as he makes his way across the garden. When he arrives, Yuuri shifts slightly; first to the left to make sure there’s enough room for Victor on the blanket, and then to the right, close enough that Victor can feel the miraculous warmth bleeding from Yuuri’s skin onto his own.

“Are they too small?”

“No, they’re fine.” Yuuri flushes; it blooms over his cheeks and crests over the top of his ears before spilling down his neck, disappearing beneath the high collar of his shirt.

“But you never wear them.”

Yuuri tilts his head towards Victor but doesn’t meet his eyes. “It’s nice to feel something warm beneath my feet.”

A particularly brave bird darts less than an arms length from Yuuri’s face, wings moving so quickly they appear still. Yuuri turns, a partial silhouette against the late afternoon sun behind him. “Do you think they too were once made of marble before they learned to fly?”

________________________________________________

Victor sits at the writing desk beside Yuuri’s favorite window seat crossing out the last sentence of his letter. He tears the paper, grabs a new one, starts over again. _We can’t go_ , he thinks; Yuuri’s not ready for London.

( _Victor’s_ not ready for London.)

(Victor learns more everyday, as Yuuri learns about himself and the world around him. He watches Yuuri’s face when Yuuri walks through the studio, when Makkachin cuddles up next to him in the guest bedroom, when the town’s postmaster gives him a once over while they retrieve Victor’s mail. Yuuri stood, used to being seen, unable to fathom a world where he’s not on display.)

Yuuri creeps into the room on silent feet; Victor doesn’t know he’s there until Yuuri prods the part at the center of his hair.  
(Yuuri has an instinct for the most sensitive parts of him.)

“Is it getting that thin?” Victor asks. He lays his head down on the desk, Yuuri’s hand is still in his hair, sifting his fingers through the strands. Victor leans into his touch, the warmth of Yuuri’s fingertips against his scalp like a salve; it’s unexpected but not unwelcome.

“What are you writing?”

“Ah. I’m...a friend of mine has requested our presence in town. I’m informing him we won’t be able to make it.”

“And why is that?” Yuuri asks. His hand has migrated to a sensitive patch of skin just behind Victor’s ear. Victor wonders what it would feel like if Yuuri were to place his lips in the same spot.

“Well, I don’t think I — that _we’re_ ready.”

Just like that Yuuri’s hand is gone. “Why?”

“For many of reasons,” Victor says. When he turns, Yuuri’s face is just inches from his own, mouth pinched, eyes troubled.

“Do you think I won’t be able to handle it?” Yuuri says, voice trembling.

“ _No_ ,” Victor says. Because the real problem here is him, and his own fear that there are more than enough tempting and glittering things in London to steal Yuuri’s interest. To steal _him_.

“Why else would we stay here?”

Victor can’t answer. When they depart a week later he finds himself in a carriage next to Yuuri, an unbridgeable distance between them. There are parts of Yuuri that he no longer allows Victor to see, that he’s closed off to nurture on his own. It’s a dance where Victor is still learning the steps, and every time he stumbles, Yuuri withdraws further into himself.

Victor shifts closer. Yuuri’s devoting all of his attention to the passing countryside, Makkachin stretched across his lap.

“Did you always live here?” Yuuri asks, still turned towards the window. “At the cottage.”

“No. I moved two years ago.”

“Hmmm.” Whatever question lingers there, Yuuri keeps it to himself. Instead, he asks Victor about the names of the places they pass along the way.

At night, they stop at an inn and Victor feels the distance between their rooms like a personal attack. It’s foolish. Yuuri’s always had his own room at the cottage. They’ve never shared close quarters there — the closest would be when Victor would fall asleep in the studio. Here, though. Here, he feels the chasm between them with all the sharpness of a palette knife, dug in dull beneath his ribs.

After a fortnight, they arrive in the city, dusty and travel worn. No one would know it by the way Yuuri’s face lights up as he takes in the sights and smells of London.

“It’s so _much_ ,” Yuuri says, as they pass through a particularly crowded square.

_Is it too much_? Victor wants to ask. He doesn’t. Over the past few days, Yuuri’s decreased the space between them, his warm thigh presses against Victor’s and Makkachin sprawls over both of their laps rather than Yuuri’s alone.

While Victor used to rent a set of rooms in London, they’ve long been claimed by another occupant. The inn Yakov had arranged for him to stay at has them in one room — Yakov expected Victor to come alone. Their room is brightly lit with two double beds on either side. They don’t linger there long; Yuuri claims the farthest one as his own and they leave to explore.

London is brighter and more beautiful than it has ever been, and their days go by all too quickly — Yuuri wants to see _everything_. Victor thinks he could spend the rest of his life cataloguing the different shades of rapture that flash across Yuuri’s face; at the kiss of spring sunlight on his skin in Vauxhaull Gardens; at the feel of fine silks and muslins as they glide across his palm in Harding, Howell & Co; at the pleasure when he tries chocolate the first time.

 

Their meeting with Yakov sneaks up on them, a looming monolith of an event that’d temporarily been banished by the sunshine of Yuuri’s smiles. Yakov’s waiting for them at the Western Exchange, the best place for contemporary artists to show their wares. With windows built into the ceiling ensuring each piece has proper lighting, if ones wishes for their art to be seen by the right sort of buyers, then one makes sure they’re displayed in the Exchange.

Victor hopes Yuuri will like his paintings.

When they arrive, Yakov stands at the back of the hall, eyeing Victor from beneath the brim of his hat as he talks to a potential buyer.

“Vitya,” he says, as Victor approaches.

“Yakov.”

“I see that the prodigal imbecile has finally returned. And he’s brought a companion.”

“Yes,” Victor says. The tips of his ears burn. His eyes involuntarily find Yuuri—Yuuri who’s examining Victors last painting before he’d retreated to the country. Critics had called it one of his finest works; to Victor it looks as though he’d simply patched all of his most successful past elements together in the hopes that they would stick.

“Is this your way of telling me that you’ve finally come to your senses?”

“I’ve come to a decision, at the very least.”

“Well, your rooms are no longer available, so we’ll have to inquire if there are any that will be vacant soon —”

“That’s not what I mean. Yuuri and I — we’re returning to the cottage at the end of the week. I didn’t come to tell you I was returning to London, I came to tell you that I wasn’t. ”

Yakov’s a whistling kettle, liable to boil over at any moment. “You’re throwing your career away, Vitya! And for what? For some young man you decided to romance on a whim —“

“That’s enough. You can say what you like about me and my choices, but not Yuuri.”

“I don’t know what this boy has done to you, Victor Mikailovich, but he’s nothing to hold onto.”

“Yuuri’s the only person I want to hold onto,” Victor says. “We’re returning to the country in a few days, regardless of your opinions. Do not treat me as though you know my own mind better than I do.”

Victor does not wait to hear Yakov’s response, he finds Yuuri five paintings away, the line of his shoulders tense and troubled. Victor knew they shouldn’t have come.

________________________________________________

On their last night in London, Victor takes Yuuri to the ballet. Mila and her fianceé Sara accompany them. Mila all sly smiles and coy words, links her arm through Yuuri’s and hoards all of his attention for herself. Victor half-heartedly supresses his frown.

When they arrive at their seats, Yuuri sits with Mila and Victor on either side. Yuuri sits to Victor’s left, softly lit in profile by the glow of the theater’s gas lights. It’s only once the curtain rises and the ballet, _Pygmalion,_ begins, that Victor manages to tear his attention away. Even once the lights dim, and the show begins Victor finds himself drawn to watching Yuuri’s reactions rather than the way the dancers float across the stage, balanced on the tips of their toes, flying through the air as the music ebbs and swells.

Mila seems similarly distracted and pulls him aside during the break between acts. She asks how he and Yuuri met, who Yuuri’s family is, nodding and laughing at Victor’s lies, even when they’re not funny. Then, she pauses, daring a quick glance at the statue of Aphrodite that lies just over Victor’s shoulder.

“Do you believe in the old gods, Vitya?” She asks.

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

“Artemis. Apollo. Aphrodite.”

“Sometimes I think I might,” Victor admits. “But then I wonder where they’ve gone — or if they were ever there to begin with. Or, maybe they decided to skip the intermediary. Let us turn ourselves into spiders on our own time. ”

“What if their presence relies upon belief?”

“If that’s the case, I can’t help but think that someday they’ll be as much of an artifact as the paintings and statues we make of them.”

In lieu of responding, Mila directs them back to their box, declaring that the next section of the ballet is starting soon. When they take their seats, Mila’s switched with Sara, and now sits at the opposite end of the box from Victor.

(If Sara were not already seated when they’d returned, Victor would think that she’d done it on purpose.)  
Yuuri doesn’t notice his return, engaged in a whispered conversation with Sara about the dancers they’re seeing on the stage; about their training, their love lives, their previous roles. As the curtain rises once more, Victor hears Yuuri asking Sara something, too low for him to catch.

Victor finds himself watching Yuuri more than the stage. Every time Victor chances a glance at Yuuri’s face, he finds enchantment, and just beneath that, hunger.

After the show, Victor tries asking Yuuri his opinion on the ballet but only receives vague, splintered replies. They return to the inn where Yuuri lies on the bed deep in thought, Makkachin sprawled diagonally near his feet. Victor watches the rise and fall of Yuuri’s chest until he forces himself to turn away. He gets ready for bed in silence, no company save his own thoughts. As Victor closes his eyes and starts to fall asleep, a low whine pushes him awake once more.

“Yuuri?”

Victor turns in his bed, drowsy-eyed, and certain that he’s dreaming. Yuuri stands outlined in a sliver of moonlight against the tall bay window in their rented room; he looks like the crescent moon has descended from the sky and traced itself onto the edges of his skin.

“I’m sorry — you were asleep,” he says. He shuffles his feet, but lingers. Yuuri’s own bed sits empty behind him, the covers rumpled, disturbed to the point that they’re half twisted into knots.

“No, I was still awake. Is something wrong?”

Yuuri glances back at his bed, wrings the fabric of his nightshirt between his fingers, “I can’t sleep.”

A thousand phrases crowd themselves onto Victor’s tongue, jostling for space and tangling the words in his throat. He swallows and hold his arms open, shifting away from the edge of the bed to carve out space for Yuuri. And Yuuri — Yuuri curls into his side. He feels smaller and far more fragile in Victor’s arms than he could have imagined.

“Do you want to discuss it?” Victor asks. But Yuuri merely shakes his head.

“Will you...will you talk to me? Like you used to before —” Yuuri trails off. Victor does his best to fill the empty spaces between them, telling stories about his life until he feels Yuuri start to relax in his hold, the stutter-stop of his breath evening out.

“Where do you think I went? When you were gone?” Victor finds that he doesn’t have an answer.

________________________________________________

Things are different once they return to the cottage. Yuuri spends more time in the garden, often disappearing to somewhere Victor can’t follow.

“Where do you go? When you’re gone.” Victor says. Makkachin is nipping at Yuuri’s heels, sure to accompany him off to wherever it is he’s hiding, the traitor. But Yuuri just shakes his head and says it’s _nowhere interesting_ before he slips off once more. They’d only shared a room at the inn for a week — had shared a bed for only one night — but without Yuuri or Makkachin, Victor’s room feels empty; lonely.  

One cloudy day, two weeks after their return to the Lake District, Victor wanders beyond his property, to the edge of a clearing he hasn’t visited in years. And there he is, Yuuri, dancing among the trees — a dryad come to life. Victor wasn’t aware Yuuri knew how to dance, but it’s clear that although he’s untrained, his instincts are to move, to create beauty.

Victor stands, enchanted. He doesn’t dare interrupt, and Yuuri doesn’t seem inclined to stop. Makkachin has no such qualms, however; as soon as she spots Victor she barks, breaking the spell and startling Yuuri. He stumbles. Victor darts out to break his fall.

It’s unnecessary. Yuuri catches himself and regains his balance. When Yuuri meets Victor’s eyes, Victor notices the pinched corners of his mouth. _I can handle it_ , his face says.

“Victor,” Yuuri says. It sounds like _what are you doing here?_  Victor steps back.

_Are you angry? What did I do?_ Victor thinks. “Are you alright?” he asks.

Yuuri steps back, his face twists and he breaks eye contact. “I’m fine.”

_Leave me alone_.

That’s the last thing Victor wants. _How do I fix this?_ He steps forward, a twig cracking under the toe of his boot. Yuuri flinches at the sound then catches himself and squares his shoulders. “Yuuri —”

“Why are you here? Did you follow me?”

“No I —”

“I came here to be alone,” Yuuri says, “I trusted you’d respect that. But you think that I will shatter at any given moment.”

“All I have done is care for you, I see no crime.”

“Of course not. You see only what serves your own ideas about me. Do not treat me as though you know my own mind better than I do,” Yuuri says, throwing Victor’s own words back at him. “I exist outside of that.”

All Victor wants is to close the gap between them, take Yuuri into his arms, and show him just how real he is. But Yuuri’s turned away from him, one hand braced against the nearest tree, his fingers digging grooves into the bark. “I must exist outside of that.”  
Victor creeps closer, mindful of the branches breaking beneath his feet, but Yuuri’s head doesn’t turn. When Victor’s near enough to put his hand on Yuuri’s shoulder, Yuuri shrugs it off.

“I apologize,” Yuuri says, still refusing to meet Victor’s eyes. The way he’s collapsed against the tree makes Victor’s words feel more inadequate than ever.

Words only seem to twist them further into knots, leaving them tangled and bitter, tied together only by the misunderstandings hanging between them. “Will you show me?” Victor mutters, inching closer.

“Show you?” Yuuri’s chin tilts up, enough that Victor can see his cheeks are damp.

“You were dancing. Before. Maybe you could show me.”

“Why would you want to see that?” “Well. Maybe I’d like dance with you.” “Maybe?”

“If you’d allow it.”

Yuuri exhales. He raises his head, meeting Victor’s gaze with red rimmed eyes. “I’ll allow it.”

“Then I’m yours to command,” Victor says, holding out a hand. Yuuri’s warm palm kisses Victor’s own.

Yuuri guides them to the center of the clearing, one hand drifting down to rest on Victor’s waist. “It’s—It’s not what I was doing earlier, but...I can’t practice this one alone,” Yuuri says. And then begins to lead Victor in a loose approximation of a waltz.

“How did you learn this?” Victor asks.

“You have a lot of books,” Yuuri says. It’s true. Victor’s cottage houses a vast collection of books, many with plates he uses when he needs a reference for his art. “I thought, perhaps, if I kept moving — if I keep moving — then I —”

Victor waits, but Yuuri doesn’t continue.

Yuuri leads him through the steps like he was always meant to move, like he’s one of the scattered rays of sunlight that find their way through the thicket of branches stretched overhead flickering across his features in an ever shifting pattern. He moves as though it would have been a crime to keep him trapped in stone.

“Yuuri,” Victor says, “I have something to show you too.”

The graveyard sits at the far edge of Victor’s property, and he hasn’t come here in years. They wander between the marble towers, like the fingers of the dead stretching upwards to break free of the earth; Yuuri looks unsettled amongst so much stone; like he expects one to reach for him, to turn him back to what he once was.

It pains Victor to imagine Yuuri so still.

When they arrive, the graves are covered in heather and soft grasses, names camouflaged by nature and time. The day is fading fast, the last rays of sunshine just holding out as the sun dips below the horizon. Yuuri sits down amidst the grass, brushing it back from the headstone. When Victor sits beside him, Yuuri tentatively leans closer to rest his head on Victor’s shoulder. Victor feels more real than he has in years, like he too was made of stone, waiting for someone to set the blood thrumming through his veins once more. He watches Yuuri run his hands over the names, tracing the rise of “N” with his index finger. “Who were they?” Yuuri asks.

“My parents,” Victor says. “I brought you here because, I think, we all turn to stone, in the end. Or perhaps, what I mean is that you being stone at some point doesn’t make you any less alive now. I know I was less alive before I met you. Like I was made of stone, too.” Victor takes Yuuri’s hand in his, drawing circles over the soft, warm, skin. “Your hands, my hands. They’ve told different stories, but one is no less flesh and blood than the other.”

Yuuri answers with a smile — watery, quivering, and beautiful.

“And they can tell stories together,” Victor adds. “Come back home with me.” “Yes. Let’s go home — I’m ready,” Yuuri says.

Hand in hand, they leave the graveyard together.

**Author's Note:**

> [ tumblr](http://spookyfoot.tumblr.com) // [ twitter](http://twitter.com/spooky_foot).


End file.
